Acrobat is much more than a browser plug in

[Troy Rollins]

On Jul 23, 2004, at 1:14 PM, Bob Warren wrote:

> To see an example of a PDF being shown in the altBrowser, please visit 
> my
> little article at http://www.howsoft.com/runrev/svg.htm once again, and
> scroll to the bottom of the page. You can also download an executable 
> demo
> from there. From this demo, you will confirm that you can print etc., 
> i.e.
> all the things you would normally do in Internet Explorer.

And all of that is a really good thing. AltBrowser (especially once 
available cross platform) is an awesome plug in.

That said, there is a much greater level of PDF functionality to be 
had. Imagine building your own custom version of Acrobat reader in 
RunRev, tied in with whatever else is in your application, with all of 
your own controls, and the ability to manipulate the Acrobat files 
however you want to, including modifying and re-saving them. Imagine 
being able to run handlers which get as parameters - the current 
document, the selected page, and the selected text on the page, plus 
keywords, metadata, and everything else the PDF stores. Continue 
imagining the ability to do a search in an embedded database, pull up a 
specific document, turn it to a specific page, and select text on the 
page. Or return a list of matching search results across many 
documents...

Browser plug in functionality is comparatively minimal, and quite 
restricted - this is not a limitation of AltBrowser, but of the Acrobat 
plug in itself. Right now, it is the best we have, and that is pretty 
good. But it can be great... the right people are involved at this 
point to start making it more possible.

Revolution is awesome, but it really needs the support of externals 
developers. AltBrowser is one example of an excellent and powerful 
functionality that does not have an equivalent in the base Revolution 
package (of the very few things.) Strong PDF support is another.

Another upside is the fact that this particular external doesn't 
require any specific browser to be installed, would be cross-platform, 
and doesn't even need Acrobat Reader to be installed.

The downsides? It likely won't be cheap, and it will likely have a 
comparatively hefty file size, roughly 10 megs of distribution resource 
files (because it is completely self-contained and makes no 
presumptions about what is installed on the user's system.)

If you have any interest in this, please send a quick message to the 
list saying so. A brief gauge of the interest level could  help inspire 
RunRev and the external developers, to get this technology into our 
hands quickly.
--
Troy
RPSystems, Ltd.
http://www.rpsystems.net